


I'm My Own Soulmate

by okay_pretender



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/F, Getting Back Together, Helen's POV, NOT ACTUAL SOULMATE AU, Orla's POV, Some hurt/comfort, a lot of Emotional Repression bc self-projection ya know, baby's first fic, i just liked the song for the title, i'm always here for the hella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21625105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okay_pretender/pseuds/okay_pretender
Summary: Orla doesn't believe in true love. And after Helen Gansey's two-year absence from Henrietta, she might just be getting used to that. But Helen isn't ready to give up on what they had. Old memories resurface, old feelings reignite, and a house full of mercurial psychics kicks back with popcorn to watch it all play out.
Relationships: Helen Gansey/Orla
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. The Old Me Used To Love A Gansey

**Author's Note:**

> Title and chapter titles are from Lizzo's Soulmate (great song)  
> This is my first fic posted to Ao3 and I sincerely apologize for any formatting issues.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edited in italics for clarity. Big thanks to those who gave feedback!

Orla doesn’t believe in true love. That’s what she tells Blue about her (frankly, depressing) curse and what she tells Aunt Maura that time she found her drunk and melancholy about someone named Butternut (frankly, ridiculous). It’s what she tells herself, too. Because your true love is supposed to be some sort of magical person who knows everything about you and loves you unconditionally and never, ever leaves. True love is supposed to feel better than anything else in the world. And for a while, it did…

“I miss him,” the caller whispers plaintively on the other end, “Can you tell me if he’s going to come back?” Orla is almost out of patience with this person, but she’s paid by the minute, so she inhales through her nose and looks, using the energy she’d leeched from the caller’s voice to locate their absentee boyfriend. She passes over a few men before getting just the right feeling about this one- and she almost loses the spiritual contact.  
-  
_“Will you come back?” she’d asked, hating herself for the question. She wasn’t supposed to feel weak like this. She didn’t care if Helen came back, she didn’t need her. Helen had tilted Orla’s chin up to try and look her in the eye; Orla stubbornly avoided her gaze.  
“I won’t lie to you, Orla. I don’t know how far away this internship will take me.”  
“So you’re leaving for good.”  
“I didn’t say that.”_  
-  
The customer on the line cleared his throat. “Not to interfere with the psychic process, but… getting anything yet?”  
“Shut up,” Orla says curtly, re-orienting herself. This boyfriend was easy to read. Helen hadn’t been. Ever. Especially not that night.  
-  
_“A year and six months…”  
And then Helen Gansey, unbelievable Helen Gansey, dropped the bomb.  
“I…”  
Helen never hesitated, she was always so methodical, calculating, precise. She always knew exactly what she wanted to say and how to say it. Helen could always say just the right thing to send Orla spinning off her axis… but she was hesitating now.  
“Ithinkweshouldseeotherpeople.”  
Orla had blinked. Stupid, so stupid, she should have seen this coming and been the one to end it, she should have had the upper hand, but she’d given that to Helen on their first date and had never gotten it back. She should’ve known she’d never be enough of a reason for Helen to stay._  
-  
Orla drags out the tension for a moment longer, partly to increase the fee and partly to gather her thoughts. She’s so blunt with delicate things, as her mother tells her so often, so sadly. She feels something, though, for the man on the other end of the line. His boyfriend is not returning to him. What is she feeling? Can’t be empathy, she doesn’t feel that toward callers, she doesn’t even know them. Maybe she’s just hungry.  
“...What was your name again?”  
“Carl.”  
“Well, Carl… I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that he’s moved on.” Her voice is steady over the words. People move on. She certainly does, very quickly these days. No one has ever lasted as long as Helen with Orla. A few weeks at best is the prize for those who dare court her.  
She hears a “no… can’t be…” and that’s when the strange feeling goes away.  
“Don’t doubt the process, Carl,” she barks down the line. He apologizes immediately. She has that effect on people. He asks her what the good news is.  
“The good news, Carl, is that you can move on knowing he never deserved to have such a loyal, caring guy like you in the first place. Go find someone better,” she says, wondering where this charitable impulse is coming from all of a sudden, and hangs up.  
-  
_“Come on, Orla, don’t just sit there. This is hard for me, too.”  
Helen’s pleading falls on shell-shocked ears. Orla does not have the patience. “Hard for you, huh?” Her Henrietta accent is coming out, reminding them both why she can’t have what Helen has, why she’s in this situation in the first place. “You just get to pick up and leave. See other people. Don’t know where I’ll find another gay girl in Henrietta, but sure. Go get a new girlfriend at your fancy new job.”  
“Don’t be like that, Orla… I don’t want you waiting around here for a year and a half for me to come back. If an opportunity does arise for you, I want you to feel like you can take it. I don’t want to leave you stuck.”_  
-  
Orla’s cousin Devon wanders into the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room, popping her gum. She looks at Orla like Orla’s lost her mind. “Were you going to do your job and answer it?” It’s then that Orla notices the phone’s been ringing, but Devon’s already picked it up. She checks the clock. It’s nine o’clock on a Thursday night. Orla signals to Devon that she’ll be signing off early on the phone line. Devon rolls her eyes but nods, she’ll take over.  
-  
_Helen reaches for her, and Orla lets her.  
It’ll be the last time she lets someone pull this crap, she’d thought as she was pulled in close to Helen’s chest. She hated that she was letting Helen comfort her after dumping her. She hated that she was letting Helen dump her at all, but what was she supposed to do? She’d never been the dumpee before. She had a brief moment of pity for the boy who’d painted that god-awful portrait of her.  
She wondered if her rejection hurt him as much as Helen’s is hurting her._  
\--  
“Ms. Gansey, your father wants you to take this file with you, he left some notes in it for you.” Richard Campbell Gansey Jr’s secretary hands Helen an enormous stack of papers barely contained by the three-inch binder. Helen gingerly takes it from Hailee’s hands, trying not to snap the straining rubber bands holding it closed. “Thanks. Have a good weekend,” Helen says on autopilot. Her mind is miles away as she strides to her car. It’ll be a long drive, she thinks, better get coffee for the road. It’s four hours from the D.C. office to Henrietta, Virginia. There are too many memories set in that town, too many for Helen to pretend it doesn’t matter and she’s making this tedious trip by car for fun. Once she’s out of the beltways of the capital, the sun sets slowly on the horizon.  
-  
_Orla’s voice was soft, so much that Helen would have had to strain to hear her if they were any further apart. “When I was younger, I watched the sunset from the back porch every day. Even if it was the middle of dinner or I had homework to do, I would stop what I was doing to go and look.” Helen had smiled fondly at her girlfriend. They were lying on the roof of Helen’s car on a blanket one of Orla’s aunts had made. The bugs hadn’t been so bad that night, and it was cooler than usual.  
“This is the prettiest sunset I’ve ever seen. Want to know why?” Helen asked. She knew what Orla’s reaction would be, but she wanted to say it anyway.  
Orla rolled her eyes, anticipating, “Why, Helen?”  
“Because I’m watching it with you.”  
“You cheeseball.” But she hadn’t moved away.  
“You like it.”  
The sun had set completely and the first stars had winked into the sky before Helen had broken the silence to ask, “Why did you like the sunset so much as a kid?”  
Orla had sighed. “My little cousin, Blue, is the only person in the family who isn’t psychic.” Helen hadn’t expected that. “She’s fifteen. She keeps talking about going to some college for forestry or whatever, and she’s smart enough to get in, but there’s no way Maura can afford to send her. I keep trying to get her to set more realistic goals, because I don’t want her to fall as hard as I did when I realized that watching the sunset every night wasn’t enough to get me to the horizon.” Helen was frozen, one hand on Orla’s spine and the other on her shoulder, with no idea what to say. She had associated Orla with Henrietta for so long, they were one in Helen’s mind. There was no Henrietta that didn’t have Orla in it, and she couldn’t picture her girlfriend outside the town Orla had grown up in._  
-  
She’d been so short-sighted, she realizes now. She had been dating the other half, but she hadn’t really seen how the other half lived. She still didn’t see it, actually. While Orla had never made a big deal about the differences between their families, she’d also been careful to meet in neutral locations, never spending much time at either house, and she still hadn’t met Helen’s parents. Then again, Helen had never pushed for her to meet them. She should have.  
The highway is dark, Helen’s headlights the only ones around as she passes countless small towns just like Henrietta. But they weren’t all like Henrietta, were they? None of these places along the road held the magnetic pull she felt toward the town where she’d gone to school, made friends for the first time, met her-  
Her what? Orla wasn’t Helen’s first girlfriend, although Helen wished she had been. Dating Ashley in DC had been fun for a while until Ash’s parents had freaked. The whole thing had completely snowballed from there- Helen shakes her head to dispel the memory of that disaster and focus on the road. She has to get to Henrietta in one piece, although it would be awfully dramatic if she were to show up disheveled, ravaged by her quest for true love… Orla would just raise an eyebrow and give Helen that look of hers- the one that said she was unimpressed, but on a higher level of unimpressed than most people would be. She hadn’t been easy to charm, and Helen had received that look many a time during the course of their relationship. This time, though, she didn’t have time for it. This was the plan: get into Henrietta, gauge the situation with Orla, make things as pleasant as possible, leave again. The plan left no room for extraneous emotion or expression, which meant it had to work. _Right?_


	2. True Love Ain't Something You Can Buy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen arrives at 300 Fox Way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a really loooong memory sequence in the middle of this. It's important, I promise.
> 
> There's also a lot of self-projection. I don't have an excuse for that. :)
> 
> Enjoy!

Jimi’s brow creases and she heads over to the window, pulling the curtain aside. She purses her lips. “That car’s mighty fancy to be puttering around Fox Way. Think we’ve got a rich cousin from out of town?” This last is directed to Calla, who quirks an eyebrow. “How much do you want to bet, Jimi, that one of ours went pro?” The psychics watch as a young, light-haired woman walks halfway up the path to the porch, pauses, turns, then pauses again. Seeming to steel herself, she sighs and sets her jaw, then marches briskly up to 300 Fox Way’s front door and knocks sharply. Jimi raises an eyebrow in Calla’s general direction. The psychometric shoots an appraising look back and opens the door, sticking out her hand in a gesture more akin to a demand than a greeting. The young woman’s expression tightens, but she shakes Calla’s hand firmly. Calla smirks. “Not a cousin, Jimi. ORLA,” she barks up the stairs, “ONE OF YOURS!” At this Helen does look properly taken aback, but the rest of the women in the kitchen, who had ventured to the front hall out of curiosity, have already returned to their activities. 

Orla saunters down the stairs, but there’s a question in her eyes- which one?- until she sees Helen standing in the entrance. Only the briefest hesitation slows her step, but Helen latches onto that. In a business interaction, Helen can always tell when a client is about to acquiesce to her terms. 

“You’re mistaken, aunt. This one was never mine.”

Silence.

Helen rolls her eyes. “I missed your dramatics.” Orla sniffs. Helen raises an eyebrow. Orla turns on her heel and marches up the stairs. If Calla, still standing in the hall, sees Helen’s eyes close in relief before she follows, she certainly doesn’t care. Orla’s flames used to be more boring, though.   
-

_One time Orla had picked Helen up after school, having in a rare moment secured the Fox Way Ford for the afternoon. “I’m taking you on a date,” she’d announced, ignoring Helen’s gawking friends. “Hop in.” Helen had marveled at how Orla, completely incongruous with the private school campus environment, seemed so much more adult, more real, than anything Helen had seen all day. She hopped in._

_They’d gone out of town, far out, but Orla had refused to tell her their destination. “You know, I don’t like surprises, but I’d go anywhere with you,” Helen had said, surprised at herself._

Orla sits on the edge of her bed. There aren’t many other places to sit, so Helen sits next to her. Neither speaks. Helen tastes the tension, it fills her mouth and nose and chokes her words in her throat. In the end, Orla speaks first. 

“Well, did you find it?”

_Orla stopped the car, got out, and popped the trunk. Helen followed her, saying casually, “Is this the part where you reveal you’ve been working undercover for the CIA this whole time and hide my body in a ditch?”_

_“Nah, too obvious. Gotta make it look like an accident. Okay, put these on.” Orla handed her a pair of dusty, well-worn hiking boots. They smelled of mud and feet. Helen fought the urge to wrinkle her nose. Orla smirked._

_“Come on, city girl. It’s a short hike, but you need appropriate footwear.”_

_Helen briefly reevaluated her life choices, weighed the balance of her life as she knew it against the monstrosities Orla was offering her, then decided she was more curious than scared and took a deep breath, sliding the boots on her feet. Orla looked amused. They’d gone into the forest only a little way when Helen heard the sound of running water. She turned to look behind her for the stream- it should have been visible from the road- but found they were deeper in the trees than she’d thought. The leaves rustled in the late afternoon sunlight, and she could’ve sworn it sounded like Latin… she must be distracted. Her last class of the day had been Latin, she must still be thinking in a dead language._

_“Orla, where are we?”_

_“This is a forest, Helen, what are they teaching you in those private school classes?”_

_“It just seems… strange.”_

_“You’re dating a psychic. A lot of things are going to be strange.” A serious note had entered Orla’s voice. Her lips pursed slightly, like she was worried. Helen didn’t want her to be worried._

_“I like that you’re strange. I just don’t want to die today if it turns out this forest is haunted.”_

_“It should be here somewhere,” Orla muttered. Soon enough she murmured in satisfaction. “Here we are.” She led Helen into a clearing at the top of an enormous waterfall._

_“Okay, backstory. I found this place a few years ago, wandering around without adult supervision like every other delinquent in Henrietta. It’s hard to find if you’re looking for it; you sort of have to do it by accident. Anyway, we’re jumping off of it.”_

_She laughed when Helen’s eyes widened. “It’s safe, trust me. And it’s fun…”_

_Before Helen could stop her, she’d taken a flying leap off the top of the waterfall and cannonballed into the pool at the bottom, whooping like a madwoman the whole way down. Helen peered anxiously over the edge, but Orla resurfaced and grinned up at her._

_“Am I supposed to go in with my clothes on?” Orla’s were soaked now; Helen hoped she’d brought towels at least._

_Orla’s eyes were wicked. “Well, you could take them off if you wanted.”_

_Helen didn’t answer beyond a raised eyebrow, just took a deep breath and jumped over the waterfall before she could think better of it._

_Time stretches._

_She can’t hear the wind in her ears, the leaves whispering through the wood, Orla’s laughter._

_She thought, oh, so that’s what it feels like to love the world all at once_

_I never want to let this go_

_She thought, there’s only a month until graduation, where has this been until now?_

_She heard Orla shout, and then she’d plunged into the pool, upper body pitched too far forward, wind knocked out of her on impact, soaring joy turned to searing pain. She couldn’t think to swim up to the sunlight and air._

_She thought, oh, so that’s what it feels like when the world casts another dreamer aside_

_I can’t hold on to her forever_

_She thought, there’s only a month until graduation, what will come after that?_

_There were hands on her then, pulling her to the surface. Orla’s voice came rushing back to her ears. “Helen, Helen, are you okay? Shit! Helen, move or breathe or something,”_

_She opened her eyes and inhaled shakily. She remembered falling, how close it felt to flying. She grinned up at Orla’s concerned face. “I want to go again.”_

_Walking back through the forest, Helen felt tired in that happy way when one could say anything that popped into one’s head and not regret it. “My family once went to see Angel Falls when I was ten. It’s in Venezuela; it’s over three thousand feet high. We toured the viewing area early in the morning, and it was quiet except for the sound of the water crashing down. It was incredible. I didn’t want to leave, but my brother had already compiled a whole list of other landmarks we_ had _to visit.”_

_Orla, inexplicably, looks affronted. “Was this a let-down, then, in comparison?”_

_“Of course not! I was going to say this was better.”_

_“Better than a rich girl vacation to one of the most famous landmarks in the world?”_

_“Orla, I came to this one with you. You keep making me realize how much there is in the world, how much I haven’t seen. I want to experience everything with you. Jumping off that waterfall— that’s how I feel about you. Nothing in my “rich girl” world makes me feel like I do about you. I didn’t have words for it before now, but I want to find a life that feels like that.” She sighed. “Funny how your cousin is the one who makes things louder for psychics, but you make things louder for everyone else.” She rolled to look at Orla. She didn’t explain further, but thought,_ Every time I’m with you, something else falls into place. It’s like the universe screaming at me to never let you go.  
-

“Did you find the career that made you feel like the waterfall? You had two years.” Orla examines her nails.

“It’s creepy when you do that. You never explained how it works- are you reading my thoughts?” Helen asks.  
“No. I can’t usually do that. It’s a strong memory for you and I was in it, so it connects me to your version of the memory. It’s not mind-reading; I can’t tell what you’re thinking. I wish I could.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t ‘oh’ me, you’re impossible. For instance, I haven’t the foggiest clue why you’re here; I already asked you if you’d found what you were looking for in that job, which means I don’t know the answer; and the only reason I can tell you stopped at the drugstore for a tuna fish sandwich is because I can smell it on your breath.”

Helen wrinkles her nose.

“And don’t do that, either! You’re not allowed to look cute until I know why you came back.”

“Can I ask you one thing? Did you miss me?” _like I missed you, like a phantom limb, like a sick feeling in my gut whenever I thought about leaving you behind-_

“I… wasn’t lonely. That’s the thing about this house. You’re never lonely. I did readings, I helped Charity and Blue with their homework, I babysat. Dev listened the one time I let myself get drunk over you. Calla offered to take me to her boxing class.” Helen makes a sound which, coming from anyone with less poise, would be called a snort. Orla smiles wryly. “Yeah, that went about as well as you’d expect.” Helen smiles, but it drops with what Orla says next. 

“You know, Helen honey, I might have needed you back then, but I don’t anymore. And you never needed me-” Helen tries to protest, but Orla talks over her- “- so what are you doing here? Trying to show remorse? Tie up loose ends?” 

“You’re not a loose end, you’re a loose cannon,” Helen mutters. It was the kind of thing that would’ve been funny when they were dating, and Orla’s eyes flash when she recognizes that.

“I came back here because over the course of two years working for my father’s company AND attending college classes, I met a lot of people, only some of whom I care to remember, and not one of them was you. I knew high school relationships weren’t meant to last, and I knew I couldn’t do long-distance anyway, so I broke up with you and I completely disregarded your feelings about it because I couldn’t even handle my own, I—”

Orla looks at her, waiting for her to finish, but Helen nods at the door. Orla addresses the snooping kids, “Go to bed, you little gremlins, I swear to god.” She closes it behind them, but she’s smiling faintly. Helen has no idea what to say. Orla sits back down, but there’s a knock on the door. It opens, revealing a short, chaotically dressed young woman who could only be Orla’s younger cousin, Blue.

“Just making sure nothing untoward is going on in here, Orla. You should keep the door open when you have girls over,” she smirks.

“Blue this is not an A and B conversation, you can C yourself out.”

“Your clever little lines get less clever every day.”

“You don’t understand what’s going on here, and thanks to your prophecy, you never will!”

Blue’s face falls, but she turns her hurt look into a fierce glare as Orla glances behind her at Helen, who appears finally at home. 

“What?”

“Salvaging the relationship I stupidly kicked to the curb two years ago— terrifying. Unfamiliar. Difficult. Family fights? That, I can do.”

Orla scoffs as if to suggest that Helen’s family feuds don’t compare in the slightest to her conflict with her cousin, but she grabs her hand and pulls her past a now-gaping Blue.

“You drove here, right? We’re leaving.”  
In the car, Orla just says, “Drive.” So Helen does. She takes Orla up to the nature preserve, parks, and leads her under the locked gate and into the park. 

“Gansey, I can’t pay my way out of a trespassing fine, so this had better be quick.”

Helen sighs. “Orla, we were young when we met each other. We were young when we broke up. And we’re still young. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’ll admit I’ve made most of them, but we still have a chance to be happy together. I’ll tell my parents I’m quitting the company, I’ll figure out a living arrangement that lets you be with your family, whatever you want.”

“You’re never this spontaneous.” Orla says, dumbstruck.

“It’s not spontaneous. I’ve been planning how to get back together with you since the day I figured out I couldn’t be happy without you. There’s no one else who can reframe my perspective when I’m too zoomed in. There’s no one else I’d follow into a forest.” She looks at Orla head-on and emphatically finishes, “There’s nothing I’d rather do than be with you and provide for you and kiss you as much as I can for as far into the future as I can see. Will you be my girlfriend again?”

Orla looks anywhere but at Helen. She’s in earnest, and earnest people make Orla’s stomach churn. She’d never stopped missing that honesty. No one else talked like Helen did. 

“Helen. We can try.”

Helen’s fingers lift Orla’s chin. Their eyes meet. Orla surges forward; she can’t say anything like Helen did but she can kiss the living daylights out of her and Helen is more than willing to let her. That’s the thing about jumping off a waterfall. If the landing hurts the first time, all you want to do is go again until you can feel the rush taking over, taste the world on your tongue, and still land safely at the bottom with the one you love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three will get this resolved and hopefully be posted within the next week. Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are like crack to me, so please help me get my fix! Also posted on Tumblr @galway_gremlin.

**Author's Note:**

> So I clearly tried to work a lot of backstory in there with very few extraneous details. Anyway. What will Orla do when Helen shows back up unannounced after two years? (Also, expect some more Fox Way funkiness in Chapter 2. I love my psychic ladies)


End file.
